Brussels: Europe’s Jihadi Capital
The haphazardly governed city failed to stem a radical presence in its slums.
Salah Abdeslam is arrested by police and bundled into a police vehicle during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels on March 18.
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The accused ringleaders of last November’s Paris terror attacks came from Brussels; so did the weapons used in an assault on a kosher supermarket in Paris last year. A Brussels resident killed four people at the city’s Jewish Museum in 2014; last August, a heavily armed man boarded a Paris-bound train in Brussels and tried to attack passengers before being overpowered.
How did jihadism take root in a city that’s one of Europe’s safest and wealthiest—not to mention the headquarters of NATO and other security-focused international organizations?